


Time and Relative Dimensions

by PurpleMoon3



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor - Fandom
Genre: Community: norsekink, F/M, Jane POV, Loki Dies, Loki Does What He Wants, Loki wants to reincarnate as Jane, Thor is a well meaning idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-29 07:18:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleMoon3/pseuds/PurpleMoon3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane always thought she was missing a part vital part of herself.  Ever since Thor showed up Jane's had this strange feeling like she's met him before, like she's done all this before...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time and Relative Dimensions

**Author's Note:**

> Original Prompt: 
> 
> It's some time after the Avengers. Loki is one of the main villains, and, at some point, the Avengers get fed up and actually kill him to prevent more damage.
> 
> Loki gets reincarnated as Jane Foster in the original Thor movie, and part of the attraction between Jane and Thor was Thor's subconscious recognizing these gentler, kinder parts of Loki.

Jane's mother died in childbirth. She came early, premature, and by all rights it should have been the other way around but the labor was long and mistakes were made and Jane came into the world down one parent. It was why when she was younger she wanted to be a nurse, because doctors can make mistakes and she wanted to be the one in the room that watches and subtly corrects and _cares_ for the people that come in.

Until her father remarried to a woman who was a nurse, and they adopted a bright little girl who has the same curling, bouncing hair as the new mother and Jane is pushed aside for the new baby.

(In retrospect, Jane knows that it probably hurt her father to look at her when she was growing into a near-identical copy of her mother, but at the time all she could think of was that he didn't -and never had- loved her.)

\---

Jane likes science. She likes taking things apart and putting them together and asking _why_. She likes watching the shows where the cast go on adventures -Star Trek is her favorite and every time Q comes on screen she swoons- and her childhood crush was Micheal Hurst. She doesn't make many friends at school because she doesn't do well with people: either she talks too much or not enough.

She ends up drifting into the National Honors Society and makes a few acquaintances and they do volunteer work together, sometimes pretending as they pick up trash on the highways that they are on _drop quests_. It passes the time, and a boy who wants to be a pilot -his parents keep pushing him toward medical degrees, though- gives Jane her first kiss. It's wet and sloppy and embarrasses them both and they blush and promise to never speak of it again.

Two years later he makes Valedictorian, but it was Jane who wrote his speech. 

(And is proud, so proud, because even if she lacks the confidence and ability to _deliver_ the lines she is still a master at word craft.)

\---

College is strange and different and Jane spends three years not knowing what she wants to do with her life until she's making out in the library basement with a girl from her dorm and they over-enthusiastically bump a bookshelf. It doesn't do much damage, they don't cause a domino-topple of shelves like in the movies, but an old, battered copy of _Myths of the Norsemen_ falls on Jane's head and makes Jackie burst out into giggles.

Jane has to admit how funny it is they hadn't realized their activities lead them to the religion section, and _The Root of All Evil_ is staring her in the face from across the aisle. 

Jackie asks if she wants to split a pie and continue in her room, which Jane agrees to, and while Jackie sweet-talks the cute librarian into letting her call the local pizza shop Jane checks out the book on Norse Mythology. That night, resting in the arms of her lover, she dreams of herself skipping over bridges of light.

Einstein developed his theories from dreams, supposedly, and when Jane wakes up she calls her academic adviser and switches her major from Political Science to Astrophysics.

(When it's all over, and she remembers that day in the stacks, she isn't sure if she should thank or curse the Norns.)

\---

Public speaking is the bane of Jane's existence. Put her in a room with twenty like-minded individuals and she will either blossom and rally them around her, or be thought of as the insane village idiot. She does best on Anonymous message boards -doesn't want to think of how much fanfic she's written for the memes- but as she stands to deliver her arguments to the board her tongue swells up and they listen politely but that is all.

That is all.

It is like she isn't even there.

But she knows people, and her papers and dissertations speak for themselves, and so by hook and crook she manages to not get _completely_ drummed out of academia and only exiled to a little town in the middle of the desert with a Intern -the only applicant- who reminds her of Jackie and Eric her sponsor/babysitter. Even though she knows he's only here to make sure Jane doesn't do something completely stupid. She has to make her own equipment, for god-sakes, and she is _not_ an engineer.

But Eric is sweet, and he kicks back, and he smiles at her like her father never did.

(It's funny how her hands used to tingle when she worked on all her equipment, and how she just assumed it was part of her inexperience at soldering and installing circuit boards. Now she knows better. Now she knows no-one else on earth, even Tony Stark, would have been able to take apart her babies and recreate them to the same effect- it is why SHIELD was so accommodating in giving them back to her and signing a contract.)

\---

Jane never tells anyone about the thrill of _vindictive glee_ that went through her when Darcy hit Thor with the van. She didn't know where it came from, or why she had to bite her tongue to keep from giggling when her Intern tased the man, and likewise she doesn't tell anyone that the second strike outside the hospital was completely intentional.

Somehow she isn't surprised when Thor plans to attack the government agents, or when he goes through with it.

(It felt familiar at the time, and she had wanted to roll her eyes at the childishness of it all, but she herself was feeling spiteful and if the blonde muscle man knocked a few of the jackbooted thugs' heads together- so much the better.)

\---

The robot comes, and Jane isn't scared. It stares at her right in the face, and Jane isn't scared.

 _You can stop this._ Part of her thinks. _It will listen to you._

But she doesn't. Because this is how it is supposed to work out. Thor has to die. Like in _Hercules_ -the Disney version- where the mortal form must be shed, sacrificed to save the damsel, in order for the god inside to be reborn.

Someone always has to play the villain. There wouldn't be stories without them, and little boys love their stories.

(Then he flies away after making a promise he won't keep, and somehow Jane cannot feel anything but numb inevitability as she sits on her roof and stares at the stars. When she dreams she dreams of broken rainbows.)

\---

Jane never meets Loki. She is occasionally, suddenly and somewhat violently transferred to different observatories, and the whole thing smells like SHIELD string pulling, but she never meets Loki. When she flips on the news and sees footage of Manhattan in shambles, it doesn't really phase her and she doesn't know why. Eventually, she get a long distance call from Thor asking after her health and safety. Jane is in the middle of a _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ marathon on Sy-Fy, and informs Thor that they should have tried the hummus offensive before hanging up.

Eric wasn't hurt, not really, and for that Jane is grateful but she's still irrationally pissed that no one saw fit to inform her. 

She could have stopped it, she knows. She could have talked Loki down. He would have listened to her, would have looked in her heart and seen, but no one tells her anything. It is as if she doesn't exist.

(Jane is tired of not existing except on the edge of perception. She doesn't want to be Jane anymore.)

\---

Loki comes back. He goes after Thor's friends, after Thor's adopted city, everything remotely connected to Thor eventually gets hit.

Except for Jane. They keep pulling her out and shuffling her around and she is _tired_ of the bullshit. She knows Loki won't come after her. She can't explain how she knows it, but she does, and they smile and humor her like the Board did when she presented her Thesis on wormholes and travel and her face goes red and she _screams_ in frustration and she _punches the agent in the face_.

They think she's been compromised. That Loki already came.

She goes in for observation after being knocked out. She glares at everyone through the window, even Thor-who-calls-but-never-visits, and eventually is released.

They don't give her back her equipment, this time, and try to figure out how it works so they can make a proper bridge. She's still signed on as a consultant, but Jane is not cooperative.

(Jane doesn't know that when she waits in captivity she picks at her nails the same way Loki does. Widow knows, and puts her findings into a report.)

\---

Jane ends up pulling a Banner and running into the wilderness to rebuild her equipment from boxes of scraps. She learns how to hunt and forage, but mostly it feels like she is _remembering_ how to hunt and forage. She feels at peace in the snowy woods, surrounded by the emptiness, and it is there that she completes her Bridge.

(Her fingers tingle all the time now, something is coming, and when they locate her camp they'll spend years trying to figure out how her generator works. When they finally do crack it open all they'll find is a piece of chewed gum and a quarter.)

\---

Her last night on earth, Jane wakes screaming with her chest burning. She runs to the shower and when she pulls back her night shirt there is a red, puffy, almost infected mark running along her chest and over her heart. Her head is pounding.

She blacks out and when she wakes again there is green fire dancing at her fingertips.

When she goes into town she watches in a diner as the news has a replay of the Avengers, minus Thor, bringing a permanent end to Loki. His chest is nothing but a bloody bowl. Jane's twinges in sympathy.

She doesn't want to be Jane.

She can't be Loki: he's dead.

So Sigyn smiles and abandons her old car, stepping between the shadows with a recently remembered spell, and goes to her base of operations. She writes a letter to Victor in case he wants to visit and catch up on old times. Jane learned the importance of friendship, and Loki made acquaintances. She wonders how Victor would take it if she told him how much he reminds her of her high school Valedictorian.

Sigyn powers up the equipment with a whispered word and steps into the light, ready to build a new life in Alfheim.

(Victor pays a conjugal visit, and they name their first daughter Cynthia, but she resembles Loki so much that Thor tries to take her back to Asgard. In retaliation Victor breeds a virus he names Fenris that gives Thor and Odin strep-throat for year. Sigyn laughs, a bubbling giggle that rises to a manic fever, and the _look_ on Thor's face as he finally _gets it_ is priceless.)


End file.
